1:49 pm Oliver Burkeman: “In Birmingham, Alabama and Birmingham, England, we are missing Michael Jackson. But we do know that we had him.” Lionel Richie now, with a fetching yellow rose in his buttonhole, gets things going with a properly impassioned rendition of Jesus Is Love.

1:50pm Emil Wilbekin: Lionel Richie sang this at the ESSENCE Music Festival and tore up the crowd.

1:54pm Seth Abramovitch: Michael’s “We Are the World” co-composer Lionel Richie sings his song, “Jesus Is Love.” We’d have rather heard “We Are the World.”

2:02 pm VH1: Do you agree with Berry Gordy that Michael is “The greatest entertainer that ever lived?”

2:06pm Ben Greenman: The “You Are Not Alone” video was creepy then and is creepier now.

2:07pm Michelle Kung: Stevie Wonder, with red glasses, takes to a piano on the stage. “This is a moment that I wished I didn’t have to see coming. But as much as I can say it and mean it, I know that God is good…and as much as we needed him, God must have needed him more… ” His song of choice is: “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer.”

2:11pm Frank James: A video reprise of Jackson’s life and highlights follows Gordy. At one point it shows newspaper front pages and video a Jackson doing a theatrical scream. It also had Jackson saying something like “It;’s so good to be thought of as a person and not a personality.” The family and friends goal really appears to be that to show that Jackson was really an ordinary person at heart.

2:18pm Lawson: Magic Johnson is telling us a story about chicken. ”The greatest moment of my life.”

2:31pm Culture Vulture: Al Sharpton is currently crediting Michael Jackson with the success of Oprah, Tiger Woods, and Obama. Also: “I want his children to know — there wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with.”

2:42pm Frere-Jones: I genuinely need Busta Rhymes to appear. Now.

2:55pm Lawson: It was nice of Ms. Nichols’ 8th grade computer class to design the slideshow for this internationally televised event.

2:56pm Abramovitch: Martin Luther King III likens Michael to a variety of roadside shrubberies and then calls him history’s greatest practitioner of the ancient art of street-sweepery. What he lacks in coherent metaphors he makes up for in VOLUME and EMPhaSIS.

2:58pm Burkeman: Texan congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee speaks now, and quickly makes a markedly overt reference to the child molestation charges against Jackson: “We understand laws, and we know that people are innocent until proven otherwise. That is what the Constitution stands for.” Applause. The rest of her speech focuses on Jackson-as-humanitarian.

3:09pm Culture Vulture: Did Usher just take off his sunglasses to make sure we knew he was crying? Also, is he really allowed to touch the casket?

3:18pm Frere-Jones: How many people can plausibly carry that “greatest entertainer” tag? I mean, it’s not like it’s been used just the once but it also can’t be used that many times.

3:18pm James: Dave at 3:16 asks when he memorial will be over. I heard it would be between two and three hours. We’re closing in on the two hour mark.

3:18 Burkeman: And now, somewhat incongruously if you ask me, 12-year-old Swansea singing sensation Shaheen Jafargholi, from Britain’s Got Talent, who picks up Who’s Lovin’ You again. Apparently Jackson had been impressed by Jafargholi’s performance after seeing it on YouTube, prompting the Jackson family to invite him to sing today.

3:29pm Culture Vulture: Now the unrecognizable chorus is doing “Heal the World.” It’s slightly sad and ironic that this is ostensibly a tribute to the career of the King of Pop and they’re just doing all the treacly ballads he did post-Dangerous. There’s practically no chance of hearing anything from Off the Wall this afternoon, is there?

3:34pm Abramovitch: If I hated the song “Heal the World” and its arm-waving children when he was alive, do I have to pretend to like it when he’s dead? Can’t we turn this into a New Orleans-ish wake and get a beat and some horns going? “Don’t Stop?” No? OK.

3:41pm Frere-Jones: Paris certainly cut through the idea of Michael being an idea.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.